Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Bill Cosby's accuser has her dramatic, detailed day in court, How a Priest Got Away With the Murder of a Nun for 2 Decades, East Coast Child and Ritual Abuse Conference in Connecticut - August 2017

describes violence
- Bill Cosby's accuser has her dramatic, detailed day in court

- The Other 'Keepers': How a Priest Got Away With the Murder of a Nun for 2 Decades
"She was later found strangled and stabbed more than 30 times, including nine wounds across her chest in the shape of an inverted cross, a satanic symbol. She was partially covered in an altar cloth, which had absorbed much of her blood. Blood was also smeared across her forehead as if her last rights had been administered."

Bill Cosby's accuser has her dramatic, detailed day in court
Steven Zeitchik June 6, 2017

In the nearly three years since women began stepping forward en masse to accuse Bill Cosby of sexual assault, none ever achieved what most abuse victims wish for: a day in court. No longer.

Andrea Constand took the witness stand at the Cosby trial Tuesday and faced off against her alleged attacker in a dramatic moment that has long been called for by survivors of sexual violence.

With that, the 44-year-old massage therapist from Toronto embarked on an emotional and detailed account of a friendship that began when she met Cosby while running operations for the women’s basketball team at Philadelphia's Temple University in 2002, and continued through half a dozen dinners and social engagements in which he mentored her for a sports broadcasting career, till the night in January 2004 when she says he gave her with three pills and penetrated her with his fingers.

The testimony offered a full account, under oath, of a narrative similar to what other women had expressed only in scattered op-eds and TV appearances, often about encounters dating back many decades.?

Cosby is charged with three counts of aggravated indecent assault against Constand and could face a decade in jail if he’s found guilty. But for a moment in a suburban courthouse Tuesday afternoon, legal outcomes took a back seat to the importance of testimony, as a woman offered a first-person lens onto the evolving dynamic between a mega-celebrity and his alleged sexual assault victim.

“He was a Temple friend, somebody I trusted, a mentor, and somewhat of an older figure to me,” Constand said of the entertainer, who served as a trustee at the Pennsylvania school.After meeting Constand via a mutual friend, Cosby started calling her on her university-issued cellphone about issues such as renovations to the team’s facilities. Constand described the ways Cosby would soon come to inquire about her personal life and eventually act like a patron. He would introduce her to important people....

But Constand also recounted details that raised red flags, at least in retrospect. In an Ontario lilt, she told of the time he invited her to his show at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut and asked her to his room to share “baked goods,” then lay back on the bed and brushed his knee against her leg. Or a series of awkward dinners, in which Cosby would invite her to his mansion and have the chef prepare a meal that she would then eat by herself, with Cosby popping in only occasionally to check on her.

Constand appeared upbeat and relaxed as she entered the courtroom, and increasingly serious and impassioned as her testimony wore on. By the time she got to the January 2004 night, the tension had become almost cinematic.

“What are they — are they natural? Are they herbal?” she recalled saying when Cosby handed her three blue pills after a dinner at his home.

“He said ‘put them down [your throat]. They’re your friends; they’ll take the edge off,’” she said.

Constand was dubious. So many, she asked? She says he nodded and she told Cosby she trusted him — in their conversations about basketball they had discussed herbal supplements — and swallowed them all.

Things soon went awry, she testified: “I began slurring my words. I told Mr. Cosby I had trouble seeing him — that I could see two of him. My mouth was very cottony.” She said stood up and found that her legs could barely support her.

He led her to the couch, helped her lie down and provided a pillow for support, and she lost consciousness, she testified. An indeterminate amount of time later, she said, she was jolted awake by physical contact: “I felt Mr. Cosby’s hands groping my breasts under my shirt. I also felt his hand inside my vagina moving in and out. I felt him take my hand and place it on his penis and move it back and forth.”

Why didn’t she stop him? a prosecutor asked.

“I wasn’t able to.”

Push him away?

“In my head I was trying to get my hands to move or my legs to move but I was frozen and those messages didn’t get there.”

She said she could only retreat into her own mind. “I wanted it to stop,” she said on the stand, her voice cracking. “I felt really humiliated. I just wanted to go home.”Constand said she was finally was able to summon the strength at about 5 a.m. She rose and prepared to walk out the door, back to her car. She said Cosby was waiting for her in the kitchen, and offered her a muffin and tea. She had a few bites and sips, then left.....http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-billcosby-trial-day-2-story.html

The Other 'Keepers': How a Priest Got Away With the Murder of a Nun for 2 Decadesby Sal Bono June 6, 2017

As Netflix spotlights the mysterious 1970 murder of Sister Cathy Cesnik in The Keepers, the docuseries has fueled fresh interest in the savage killing of another nun a decade later.

There are striking similarities between the murder of Sister Cathy in Baltimore and the 1980 killing of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl in Ohio: Both slain nuns, decades of unanswered questions, allegations of a cover-up by authorities in a staunch Catholic community — and a priest at the center of it all.

The Keepers, which follows citizen sleuths trying to crack the unsolved murder of Sister Cathy, suggests the chaplain of Archbishop Keough High School — Father A. Joseph Maskell — was involved in the murder after at least one student confided to the nun that he was sexually abusing her.

Neither sexual abuse nor murder charges were ever brought against him, leading his former students to speculate whether there had been a cover-up by authorities. A judge refused to re-open the case years later since the statute of limitations had passed and Maskell passed away in 2001....

The Murder of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl

On April 5, 1980, the day before Sister Pahl was to celebrate her 72nd birthday, she was found murdered in the chapel of Toledo Mercy Hospital in Toledo, Ohio.

She had ministered over the sick and terminally ill inside the hospital, and worked as the chapel’s caretaker. On the morning of her death, she was inside the chapel preparing for the following day's Easter services.

She was later found strangled and stabbed more than 30 times, including nine wounds across her chest in the shape of an inverted cross, a satanic symbol. She was partially covered in an altar cloth, which had absorbed much of her blood. Blood was also smeared across her forehead as if her last rights had been administered.

The grisly scene was made to look like a satanic ritual. It also appeared as if she'd been sexually assaulted, although that allegation remains unclear.

Two police officers were inside the hospital settling in for breakfast when a nurse came running to them frantic about the nun’s bloodied body. As the officers raced to the chapel, so did two chaplains at the hospital, Reverend Jerome Swiatecki and Father Gerald Robinson.

The Investigation

As the police kicked off their investigation, they questioned hundreds of hospital staffers, other Sisters of Mercy, the Catholic clerics who worked with her, as well as Father Robinson.

Robinson, who presided over Sister Pahl’s funeral, was questioned by police after they found a letter opener in his desk. At the time, the news of the sword-shaped letter opener, which authorities say fit the size of some of the stab wounds, was never made public.

Cops also reported he'd appeared cold and aloof after seeing the nun's slain body.

The priest, who grew up in Toledo, was viewed as a pillar of the community....

The priest was never charged after police cited insufficient evidence, and Yonke, as well as multiple news outlets, speculated about a possible cover-up during the investigation.

“The police chief was a devout Catholic and very influential,” Yonke said. “There was pressure applied not to charge him.”....

As the Catholic Church came under fire in the early 2000s over rampant claims of abuse at the hands of priests, a woman wrote a letter to the Toledo dioceses in 2003 saying that she had been subjected to ritualized sex acts by members of clergy from the city.

In her letter, which was later passed to police, the woman named Father Gerald Robinson as one of her abusers.

“In that letter... Father Robinson was mentioned. We decided to reopen the case then,” Toledo Police Detective Steve Forrester told Inside Edition in 2004. “We re-interviewed all the old witnesses from 1980.”

By analyzing blood transfer patterns, an obscure new technology seldom used at the time, they could study the patterns of blood from objects when they are laid down.

The technology sparked outrage with Robinson’s lawyer, John B. Thebes, who told The New York Times in 2004: “It's not DNA. It's not blood spatter, which is blood you find on walls or other surfaces. It's an imprint of some kind. Something happened that changed the nature of this case, and I don't know what it is.''

Police also determined that the sword-like letter opener discovered in Robinson's desk was the murder weapon.

In 2004, Robinson, who lived next door to the police station, was arrested and charged with the 1980 murder.

The Toledo dioceses banned Robinson from performing any priest activities and duties following his arrest. They also refused to pay any of his legal expenses....

Ritual abuse exists all over the world. There have been reports, journal articles, web pages and criminal convictions of crimes against children and adults. https://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/
Has additional articles and research about child and ritual abuse.